I’m not sure about you, but the subject of ‘divine providence’, has troubled me over many years. Even from a young boy being raised in the Calvanistic tradition I wondered about the perspective taught. If someone died, the view was God was involved in that. Even if it was an ‘accident’, God supposedly so tightly controlled things that He was closely involved, and good would somehow come out of it. Of course I knew that God wanted to bring good in all things, but that He caused the ‘accident’? My young mind couldn’t get it, nor as I grew older could it then.
We were also taught that we were not puppets! I wondered further how there could be ‘accidents’ if all that regards God involvement in human affairs were true.
The most confusing part was actually knowing Him, knowing His nature, His character; which seemingly did not line up with this view of what I now know as ‘meticulous providence’.
I’m reading further on the subject, as of course it flows through to many areas of our life. For instance - prayer, why pray at all if God is in control of everything? A friend said once to my wife “Why pray, God is in total control, He will do what He wants to do, when He wants to do it”. Personally, I can’t cope with such views and so when I came across the attached articles a short while ago, I thought I’d publish them as I’ve found them quite helpful.
They don’t give a complete picture, hence I’ll be posting more under this heading “Why did the bridge fall?” Read More...